https://doi.org/10.37955/cs.v5i4.210
Received January, 09 2021 / Approved June, 13 2021 Pages: 14-25
eISSN: 2600-5743
Challenges and contributions of
women workers in the agricultural
sector in the Sibaté region
Retos y aportes de las mujeres trabajadoras del
sector agro en la región Sibaté
Victor Enrique Bonilla
Ph.D, Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios, Soacha - Colombia, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3278-145X
victorbonillacastillo@gmail.com
Karen Jullieth Hernández Sarmiento
Ph.D, Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios, Soacha - Colombia, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4290-1758,
karenh@uniminuto.edu.co
Geraldinne Rodríguez Bedoya
Ph.D., Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios, Soacha - Colombia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1696-2066,
grodri62@uniminuto.edu.co
Abstract
The flower industry appears forty years ago in fields dedicated to
agriculture in the savannah of Bogota as Madrid, Mosquera and Funza
among others, in these forty years of activity in the flower sector grew
and became the fourth largest industry in the country. In 1995, the
export of flowers to foreign countries began. One of the most relevant
factors of floriculture is its human capital, most of which are women
who are massively hired due to qualities such as gentleness, patience
and the low salary they are willing to receive for the work they perform.
Resumen
La industria floricultora aparece cuarenta años atrás en campos
dedicados a la agricultura en la sabana de Bogotá como Madrid,
Mosquera y Funza entre otros, en estos cuarenta años de actividad en
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el sector floricultor creció y se convirtió en la cuarta industria del país.
En el año de 1995 se inicia la exportación de flores a países extranjeros,
uno de los factores más relevantes de la floricultura es su capital
humano que en su gran mayoría son mujeres que son contratadas
masivamente debido a cualidades como la delicadeza, la paciencia y el
bajo salario que están dispuestas a recibir por las labores que
desempeñan.
Palabras clave/ Keywords
Floriculture, Women, Labor Exploitation, Illness, Crops, Economy
Floricultura, Mujeres, Explotación Laboral, Enfermedad, Cultivos,
Economía.
Introduction
The following research is based on a study conducted in the
floricultural business sector of the country, which is currently
positioned as the fourth most important sector in terms of exports, and
has been enjoying a healthy economy and progressive growth for forty
years. For Ortiz (2014) and Berbegal-Bolsas et al., (2021) the focus of
this research is not oriented to make an analysis of the success
obtained by this business sector, but to expose the working conditions
of the workers who with their effort and dedication have contributed
to position this industry in the place of importance it has today; but
however, despite its great success and economic growth none of these
benefits seem to improve the quality of life of these workers of such an
important economic sector of the country.
Today, almost thirty years after the 1991 Constitution came into force,
whose main objective is to ensure the welfare and dignity of all
Colombians, Article 25 stipulates that "Work is a right and a social
obligation and enjoys, in all its forms, the special protection of the
State. Everyone has the right to work in dignified and fair conditions"
(p. 25). However, many of the workers in this sector have quite
unfavorable working conditions.
To (López-Rodríguez, 2018, p. 92) contextualize and understand the
problem in its full dimension, first a brief historical account of what
has been the development and growth of this sector in the country will
be made, also Zuluaga & Moncayo (2014) indicate that later we will
talk about the working conditions in which the workers of this sector
are found, taking as a reference the flower crops located in the
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municipality of Sibaté Cundinamarca; ending with an approach from
the point of view of the business administration on how to mitigate this
harsh and hard reality that women who work in this sector face on a
daily basis, in order to provide them with decent working conditions.
According to Arza et al, (2021); Cárdenas and Rodríguez (2011) the
flower industry appeared forty years ago in the fields dedicated to
traditional agriculture and livestock in municipalities of the savannah
of Bogotá, such as: Madrid, Mosquera, Funza, Tenjo, Chía and some
municipalities of eastern Antioquia, which were gradually covered
with plastics giving way to what would soon become one of the main
agro-industries in the country, generating foreign exchange and
employing mostly unskilled labor.
Miranda & Corica (2015) comment that in 1995 the export of flowers
to foreign countries began. Due to the accelerated growth of
floriculture, Colombia became the second largest exporter of flowers
in the world, after Holland, and the main exporter to the United States.
The world's main flower exporters produced U$7,853 million,
including the Netherlands (40%), Colombia (17%) and Ecuador (11%).
Among the world's main importers are the USA, Germany and the
United Kingdom, with 16%, 15% and 13%, respectively. One of the
main destination markets for flowers produced in Colombia is the
United States, with 77%, and the United Kingdom and Japan, each
with a 4% share.
Cardenas and Rodriguez (2011) also state that:
"In these 40 years of activity of the flower sector grew and
became the fourth largest industry in the country behind oil,
mining and coffee and at the end of the first decade of the XXI
century exports fluctuated between 900 and 1,000 million
dollars generating about 100,000 direct jobs mostly of
operators" p. 15.
As can be seen above, the floriculture sector has been enjoying good
financial health and productive and economic growth that has led it to
position itself as one of the leading export sectors at the national level.
From the point of view of business administration, this means a
substantial profit margin for entrepreneurs. However, this is a clear
sign that economic growth and business development does not mean
welfare and social development for the workers in this industry.
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In addition to the low salaries, which in some cases are not even close
to the legal minimum wage stipulated by the national government,
these employees must face with stoic patience the labor harassment
since they are often forced to extend their working day, especially in
times where international and national trade are in high demand, such
as Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Love and Friendship Day in the case
of Colombia, in order to meet market demands: Valentine's Day,
Mother's Day, Day of Love and Friendship in the Colombian case in
order to meet the demands of the market and all for a meager overtime
pay that does not compensate the effort and physical wear of a longer
working day. In this regard, Cactus (2013), states that:
"The flower sector wants to generate higher profits. They demand
greater productivity in terms of their daily goals in order to
export more, which many of these workers cannot oppose: it is
their daily sustenance and, since they do not have the
requirements to access other types of employment, it is their only
and indisputable source of income. In addition to the imperative
need to find income to survive for themselves and their families,
most of the workers are clearly unaware of their labor rights and
social guarantees. Most are unaware of the legal norms that
regulate labor in Colombia, much less how to enforce them." p.
12.
In addition to the low salaries and the hard working hours that women
workers in the flower sector must perform, there are other types of
affectations that contribute to further diminish the quality of life of
these poor women, such as, first of all, the serious deterioration of their
health and, secondly, the few labor guarantees offered by their
employers.
Tabet (2017) mentions that the floricultural work has all occupational
risks such as: physical problems related to work ergonomics (repetitive
handling of tweezers and scissors to remove pine needles and model
the flowers; chemical due to the increasing use of pesticides in charge
of accelerating production and which are harmful to the health of the
people who work there; biological due to the work with plants and
contact with various types of microbes; psycho-social due to the high
level of stress due to work under pressure and for times); without
forgetting the exposure to excessive cold and heat.
The National Safety Institute talks about The application of pesticides
in the cultivation process is carried out in closed enclosures or
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greenhouses. The most common methods of this application are:
spraying of liquids and fogging or distribution of mists, dusts, vapors,
fumes, aerosols and granules. In all of them there is a risk of exposure
and the most frequent routes of exposure for flower growers are
cutaneous and respiratory, the activity is characterized by intense and
frequent contact with flowers and plants and, therefore, with primary
irritants or allergenic substances (for this reason it is important to
promote and adopt the use of gloves) as well as exposure to pollen and
the scent of certain flowers and decorative plants. Musculoskeletal
disorders such as tendinitis of the elbow and wrist, carpal tunnel
syndrome and alterations in the mobility of the shoulders are frequent.
These are the battles that flower growers fight every day as they expose
themselves to bring a daily sustenance to their homes, and although in
the eyes of an unsuspecting spectator it would seem that they are lucky
to be surrounded by roses, for Morteruel et al. (2021) and Núñez,
(2017) the crude and ignored reality is that they really live among
thorns. Moreover, the health problems they suffer transcend their own
corporeality and affect the health and well-being of their children.
Pesticides used in the flower industry have future effects on babies
born to flower-growing mothers; these children develop
communication difficulties, less fine motor skills and are five times
more likely to have visual problems than children of mothers in other
occupations.
As already mentioned, the flower industry operators are being
recruited from a sector of the country's female population that is in a
sensitive state of social vulnerability due to various circumstances.
Added to this are the high unemployment rates in the nation, the
armed conflict that has displaced a considerable number of the rural
population to the urban centers, especially in the main cities, causing
poverty belts to grow in their peripheries and therefore a healthy
reserve of labor for the business sector and especially for the flower
industry. All these factors have contributed to labor abuse by
employers in this economic sector. Despite the fact that the flower
industry is growing more and more, workers do not obtain better
benefits or labor guarantees, on the contrary, their working conditions
are increasingly precarious, as can be seen in an article of the magazine
florecer in its 26th edition where it is explained that:
The most acute impairment of working conditions lies in work
overload. The work system is manual, management is despotic, and
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productivity increases depend directly on increased muscular and
nervous effort. The "incentives" consist of competition among
operators, harassment by supervisors, public embarrassment of
laggards, and threats of dismissal or non-renewal of contract. The
strenuous extension of the workday as a way to meet goals in seasons
such as Valentine's Day is often not compensated in money but in time,
or is simply withheld. Such a degree of subjugation of the workers is
antagonistic to any form of organization or exercise of rights.
What is mentioned in the previous paragraph becomes a bleak outlook
for women who work in this sector, because no matter how much the
economy and the flower industry grow in the country, they continue to
be marginalized and the importance of their labor force for the growth
of this industry is ignored.
Thus, the main objective of this research is to identify the challenges
and contributions of women working in the flower-growing sector of
agriculture in Sibaté. With them, the following specific objectives are
followed: To evidence the labor problems of women floriculturists in
the municipality of Sibaté Cundinamarca; To understand the negative
impact that bad cultivation practices have on the health of women
floriculturists; and To analyze the vulnerability of women who
dedicate their main work to floriculture in the municipality of Sibaté
Cundinamarca.
Chiavenato (2009) and Richter, (2013) emphasize that the worker
should no longer be seen as a resource of the organization, as servile
objects or simple passive subjects of the process, but fundamentally as
active subjects who make decisions, take actions, create innovations
and add value to organizations. Moreover, the person is seen as a
proactive agent, endowed with his or her own vision and, above all,
intelligence, which is the greatest of human abilities, the most
advanced and sophisticated.
Regardless of what the theoreticians may say about humanizing
relations in production systems between employers and employees, no
matter how much they highlight the sensitivity and the invaluable
value of human resources in the business sector, the indisputable and
paradoxical truth is that in the XXI century where politicians and
different social sectors proudly proclaim that we are a society of rights
that ensures the dignity and welfare of all human beings without
distinction of race, creed or social status, the dignity and rights of
women workers in the flower sector continue to be violated in such a
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flagrant manner; the dignity and rights of women workers in the flower
sector continue to be violated in such a flagrant manner. But perhaps
the most outrageous thing is that the companies in this sector forty
years later have not even been able to make a substantial investment
in equipment to at least as far as possible mitigate the health problems
of their workers who are exposed every day to breathe different
chemical compounds, pollen and other things in the closed
environment of a greenhouse, not to mention the issue of humidity and
sudden changes in temperature when entering and leaving their
workplace.
Female participation in the floriculture industry is 65% higher than
that of men, but why the massive hiring of female personnel?
According to Olmos-Suarez, (2018) this is because women
floriculturists clean weeds, tie plants, prune, cut, harvest and pack for
a much lower wage value than what a man charges, men are more
involved in tasks such as irrigation, fumigation and crop maintenance.
Other authors such as Garzón and Pedraza (2013) state that the reason
for the majority hiring of women finds different answers depending on
who is asked. It is argued that this preference is related to certain
qualities considered feminine, such as care, delicacy, dexterity or
patience, which allow a better job to be done. On the other hand,
several studies document how women are more dependent on this
source of work: most of the operators are mothers who are heads of
households.
Although occupational disease is something that has always affected
human talent and therefore business productivity, in recent decades
measures have been taken to minimize this problem either by
providing equipment to operators or by training personnel in
occupational health issues. As it has been evidenced, the floriculture
industry does not escape from this scourge, since a high percentage of
women are affected in their health as a result of this occupation;
however, the hypothesis that we intend to handle in this work is not
only about the causes of this health problem in the floricultural sector
of the country, but also about the apathy on the part of the
entrepreneurs of this sector towards the welfare of their human
resources, which is basically due to three aspects, namely:
a) Women workers in the floriculture sector are a type of worker that
does not require a high degree of specialization, which makes them
an easily replaceable resource for the companies.
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b) Companies in the floriculture sector are not adequately
implementing education programs for their personnel regarding
occupational hazards, since their human capital is easily renewable
(business negligence to save time and money).
c) Companies in the floriculture sector are not adequately equipping
their human talent with the protective gear required by their
employees for this type of work, which in the administrative sector
is known as saving on production costs.
In the midst of this not very encouraging hypothesis, it should be noted
that in Colombia the success of the floriculture sector depends largely
on human capital, most of which is made up of women. According to
Cantor (2003), the flower industry arrived in Colombia at the end of
the 1960s. A North American promoted the first cultivation of flowers
in the country, which today is the world's second largest exporter of
this product, recognized for its variety and quality. According to the
Asociación Colombiana de Floricultores, this industry generates large
amounts of foreign exchange for the nation and benefits the
population by creating direct jobs with minimal training requirements
that are not very demanding in terms of hired labor.
On the other hand, Cactus (2013) states that: "its workers, however,
have poorly paid jobs, precarious working conditions that cause
damage to their health" (p. 23). The working hours of the employees
in this industry are very long because they are obliged to meet certain
goals that are almost impossible to achieve in the established working
hours, which is why their working hours are extended.
As this is an investigative work carried out with a sample taken from
the floricultural sector of the municipality of Sibaté, some tools have
been used such as the interview, the survey and the field observation,
as follows a brief description of the importance of each one of them in
the elaboration of this work.
Materials and Methods
An interview is an exchange of ideas and opinions through a
conversation that takes place between one, two or more people where
an interviewer is designated to ask questions. The importance of this
tool lies in the fact that it allows us to know first hand information with
the actors who are directly involved in the research process. The
following are the findings of a survey of 44 women workers in the
flower sector.
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Results
Of the women working in floriculture, 79.5% said that they have been
working in this sector for approximately 2 months to a year; only 13.6%
of the women surveyed said that they had been working for a period of
between 2 and 5 years, and a small percentage of 6.9% said that they
had been working for 5 years or more. It is clear from these
percentages that this is a sector that has a high turnover of personnel,
and many of the respondents who say they have been working in this
industry for several years, make the point that they have not worked in
a single flower crop, which corroborates what was said in previous
paragraphs that this is one of the jobs that offers the least job stability.
Regarding wages, the answer to this question from the women growers
was that 68.1% of them earn less than the legal minimum wage and
only 31.8% of them earn the minimum wage that should be paid to any
worker. This minimum wage for them is earned by also counting their
overtime. And they say that the management of the flower companies
takes advantage of them because they are not educated and in many
cases are mothers who are heads of household.
Regarding the issue of additional economic incentives or emotional
salaries provided by the company, 100% of the women floriculturists
said that they had never received additional incentives for the effective
fulfillment of their work, and stated that this leads them not to want to
excel in their jobs, but to dedicate themselves to doing the work for
which they are paid.
The 98% of women floriculturists say they feel exploited at work in this
industry, a fairly large figure, while only 2% of them say the opposite,
and this is really due to a lack of knowledge of their labor rights.
100% of the women floriculturists interviewed reiterated that they
would like to have a permanent employment contract, with all the legal
benefits and guarantees that workers should have for themselves and
their families.
Conclusions
By way of conclusion with this research work it has been observed that
in the country there is no effective control by government entities for
the protection of the labor rights of the less favored classes and even
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more marked this situation is seen in front of the abandonment by the
state towards the working classes of agriculture shows that this is an
old problem in our territory can be seen with the massacre of the
banana plantations and the recent agrarian strikes, A clear example is
presented by the magazine Semana (2014), which states that Colombia
is one of the worst countries to work in because workers' rights are not
respected. This conclusion was reached by the International Trade
Union Confederation (ITUC), an alliance of regional trade
confederations that advocates for labor rights around the world. In this
index Colombia is on a par with China and worse than Haiti with a
score of 5. It is essential to empower the human talent of the flower
sector so that their contributions to society and the economy become
visible, in this way it will be possible to build strong sectors. She
comments that female empowerment is built on the idea of self-
efficacy and the importance of the realization of women, in terms of
the objective of being agents of change in their own lives; we must try
to make visible the leading role of these women and the importance of
their actions in this sector.
A possible solution to this problem would be to establish a regulation
by the governmental entities so that the hiring systems in the
agricultural sector are made in a counter current way offering stable
jobs that allow the worker to have all the benefits that by law should
correspond to him as the vast majority of collaborators who work in
occupations other than those of the Colombian agricultural sector. In
addition to recognizing the contribution that these workers make with
their efforts to the economic growth of the country and the
strengthening of Colombian companies so that they continue
exporting quality products and this nation is recognized for it
worldwide.
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